Comments

Thanks Stanley. I fixed it but kept the older story as a separate link. Thought that was interesting too that they’re just upping wages 7.5% across the board. Probably won’t see that in the US anytime soon!

About the design translator: it will hurt likewise the calculator and the FFT, YOU HAVE TO DO THINGS THE OLD STILE AND THEN DO IT THE FASTER WAY IF YOU WANT TO (sorry the caps, but learning to do integrals and then using Wolfram’s Mathematica is enlightening: you can do it burning tens or even hundreds of watts or just with pencil, paper and a candle, your choice, I choose to double check).

PS: I haven’t heard the show yet, it’s f**king late in Chile, must work in 5 hours 🙁

and it would be fair to say that i normally don’t mind when people comment without reading first. it’s not a bot, its an online community of PEOPLE who vote for each other, there is already another tektronix user using it. its no worse than asking for the votes on a youtube video blog!

Ah, you caught me, I didn’t go check out the Twitter feed. I don’t think anyone will fault me for not going to a feed called “GetVotesOnline” though. I also don’t go to feeds that are “Onlin3G4mblingN0w” and “GIRLSGIRLSGIRLS” :-). Like I said, I don’t mind, I just don’t think we can endorse it.

Chris / Dave, you discussed piggy-backing chips on today’s show… I’ve heard of this practice before but I’ve never seen it in any of the numerous devices I’ve torn apart over the years. Is piggybacking chips regarded as “acceptable” in commercial products? Or is it just something an EE might do in the lab as part of a debugging routine?

Is it just analog IC that support this interesting technique or are there some digital ones that allow it too?

Interesting anyway. I certainly enjoyed the bit where you actually talked about electronics 🙂 hehe

Hey guys I love the show and just heard the latest podcast. I wanted to address the standby power comment Dave had about commercial power supplies.

In the US, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 established no-load power requirements of 500mW for all power supplies with a nameplate output power less than 250 watts, which corresponds to level IV in the international efficiency marking protocol. Energy Star 2.0 requirements lowered the standby requirements to 300mW for all external power supplies with <50W nameplate output power (like a Nokia wall wart) and kept the 500mW requirement for power supplies with output powers of 50-250 watts, which corresponds to level V. However, Energy Star is a voluntary EPA program rather than a strict regulation. Some countries are exempt from meeting all of the provisions of Energy Star under certain conditions, (like Australia and New Zealand do not have to meet the standby requirements for AC-AC external power supplies) but can still have their power supplies labeled as level V .

The EU has gone even further and set a standby power consumption limit of 300mW for all electrical equipment up to 150W output power. DOE is currently working on new stand-by standards in their "Battery Chargers and External Power Supplies" rulemaking.

As a side note, these regulations all apply to external power supplies rather than one embedded in the product like the Tektronix oscilloscope so I don't know how much merit there is in comparing the two cases. Keep up the good work!

Just wondering… since Chris got all this cool recording equipment, and with that, one would think you would do some editing, why leave in all of Dave’s comments about “I can’t hear you.. ok let’s switch to Skype… oh I heard the Skype startup sound in my headphones… uuuugh, oh you dropped out…”

I had a TXS0104ED smoke on me a while ago. I never investigated why. It might have been an honest wandering wire short or metal under board on the test bench kind of short.
I’ve encountered piggy backed logic IC’s a couple of times on boards in the field where they obviously weren’t quite cutting it with the one chip. Pretty sure it was an as-installed remedy for site conditions rather than as-designed.

I’m behind on my Amp Hour listening. The part about standby power reminded me of a recent project where I considered using a linear power supply to generate 0.5V from 5V, 10% efficiency, b/c of noise concerns.